We’re half way through April and budget season is just around the corner. Didn’t we just celebrate the New Year?
During deliberations of the budget, the city council meets as the finance committee. Same people different name. The finance committee is the city council tasked with budget deliberations. Until the mid to late 1960s, the finance committee met to discuss the budget in non-public sessions, so we have made some progress toward transparency over the last 60 years, but not nearly enough.
Rules are set for the budget’s deliberations. The administration is allowed 15 minutes to present the budget for each of the city’s departments. Councilors (members of the finance committee) are directed not to ask questions that would require background information or longer responses.
Questions by councilors requiring more detailed responses need to be submitted to the administration in writing. The administration’s answers are then distributed to all the councilors. But unless you are aware of this process and unless you ask to see the questions and answers — that are not part of the minutes or referenced in the minutes of finance committee meetings — then you won’t know what was asked and how the administration responded. The daylight from the proclaimed council’s transparency has started to dim.
Here’s where it gets real cloudy. Just prior to the final finance committee meeting and before the city council votes on the budget, a meeting takes place between the mayor and the city manager. Here they hash out the final details and sticking points of the budget and, at the eleventh hour, present those changes to both the councilors and the public.
There are deliberations but no one has had an opportunity to review these changes prior to the previous finance committee meeting. The public has an opportunity to testify on the changes, but unlike the previous finance committee meetings, the public has no opportunity to review these changes prior to the meeting.
Immediately after the finance committee makes a recommendation to approve the budget, the city council meets to approve the budget. A month from the time the budget is delivered to the city council and the final vote is taken, should be sufficient to discuss the budget in detail. But eleventh-hour amendments do not receive the same opportunity to understand the changes and ask questions. In fact, last year there was no printed document listing the changes for the public to read before the council voted on the final budget.
And did I mention there are actually two budget documents? The budget that is available for viewing on the city’s website and a second document (a more detailed budget) that is distributed to members of the city council. So this process is better than when I was on the council, when even a city councilor would have to request the detailed budget document — assuming they were aware of it. But the public is excluded from this document unless you are somehow aware of its existence.
Questions asked behind closed doors, budget changes at the eleventh hour that aren’t distributed to the public and budget documents not readily available.
Transparency? If my cataracts were this cloudy I’d be blind.
Allan Herschlag lives in Concord.